For the record, my Bill would have cost just 0.7% of the NEW spending for Budget 2016 and 3.6% of the NEW spending planned by National for 2017. At full implementation it would cost 0.03% of the $3b worth of tax cuts John Key wants. Is that more than minor? I don’t think so.
This Government do not want to pop the property bubble they have built because it’s the only thing propping up the economy and the inflated sense of wealth the middle classes have derived from property speculation keeps them voting National.
Workers in this country and around the globe need our own policy on immigration. Ultimately we can never stop workers seeking a better life. That is true for New Zealanders going to Australia or workers coming to New Zealand. We should support every step that equalises the status of workers here, whether they were born here or not. As a first step, that means that no worker on a temporary visa should be tied to one employer.
What the Police seem to be wanting here is the GCSB to act as the 3rd party to simply go through anyones cloud without a warrant.
Budget 2016 saw the Māori Party score another set of annual excise tax hikes, seeing efforts to further decrease the number of smokers continue to 2020, and the cost of smoking to rise by up to $30 in the same period.
Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader represented a big shift to the left in the British Labour Party. But from day one the mostly right-wing Labour MPs have been plotting to get rid of him.
While Key can build tax havens and blow $26million on a flag referendum, apparently we don’t have any money to ensure Lifeline stays afloat.
National’s double speak are obvious lies but when you are a desperate speculator mortgaged up to the hilt you don’t care and if you are one of the missing million voters, you stopped listening.
In many countries around the world, statistics about things like the rates of unemployment or crime are used by the government of the day to demonstrate changes in those areas. In New Zealand, by contrast, changes in statistics (as in, changes in what the statistics actually represent) are used instead to obscure a lack of improvement in same.
Brexit has shone daylight on a crisis that’s been brewing for several decades. The utopian proclamation by Francis Fukuyama about the ‘end of history’, in the heyday of globalisation, has succumbed to the reality that paradigms come and go.